Lame Deer - Seeker of Visions

John Fire Lame Deer (Native American Shaman)

I was all alone on the hilltop. I sat there in the vision pit, a hole dug into the hill, my arms hugging my knees as I watched old man Chest, the medicine man who had brought me there, disappear far down in the valley. He was just a moving black dot among the pines, and soon he was gone altogether. Now I was all by myself, left on the hilltop for four days and nights without food or water until he came back for me... Darkness had fallen upon the hill. I knew that hanhepiwi had risen, the night sun, which is what we call the moon. Huddled in my narrow cave, I did not see it. Blackness was wrapped around me like a velvet cloth... Slowly I perceived that a voice was trying to tell me something. It was a bird cry, but I tell you, I began to understand some of it … I heard a human voice too, strange and high pitched, a voice which could not come from an ordinary, living being. All at once I was way up there with the birds. The hill with the vision pit was way above everything. I could look down even on the stars, and the moon was close to my left side. It seemed as though the earth and the stars were moving below me. A voice said, "You are sacrificing yourself here to be a medicine man. In time you will be one."

- John Fire Lame Deer

Erdoes, R. (1972). Lame Deer Seeker of Visions. New York: Washington Square Press, p.1-5